


The Family Look

by Nunonabun



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14271009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nunonabun/pseuds/Nunonabun
Summary: Angela's difficulty at school leads to a discussion with her parents.





	1. Angela

“Don’t you ever look like your Mummy!”

It was such a simple, commonplace phrase. Shelagh had heard it hundreds of times, and likely said it about as often, given her line of work. Yet now she heard in it a myriad of subtexts and assumptions that she never would have assumed before her marriage; before she and Patrick had adopted the little girl they were blessed to be able to call their daughter.

—[ 3 days earlier ]— 

 _How much allspice is the proper amount?_  Lucille had loaned her an old family recipe for a dish called ‘jerk chicken’ which her mother had mailed over and Lucille had made for luncheon at Nonnatus last week. Though Lucille had helpfully pointed out the difference between British allspice and Jamaican allspice, as with any family recipe, the measurements were vague, maintained by the current cook having cooked alongside the writer of said recipe. Shelagh supposed she could just add to her taste and then further adjust it based on her family’s reviews.

As though thinking of them had summoned them, Shelagh heard the click of the door that signalled that Patrick and Angela must be home.

“Hello dears!” She called out, correctly assuming they would come to her.

However, she hadn’t guessed the tears that would accompany her daughter’s greeting. Instead of her normal cheerful hello, Angela had simply run over and hugged her mother’s leg.

She immediately bent down to enfold her daughter in her arms. “Sweetheart, what ever is the matter?”

Angela simply shook her head and buried it in the crook of her mother’s neck.

Shelagh hear the crack of Patrick’s knees as he bent down to rub his daughter’s back and explain the situation.

“Apparently Miss Lang asked her to read from the board, and that was something of a tricky request.” He paused to see if Angela would elaborate further.

Comforted enough to have regained her vocabulary, she did. “The words were all fuzzy and I tried but…” the tears were starting to well up once more. “I guessed wrong and then everybody laughed.”

Shelagh met Patrick’s eyes over Angela’s head as she pressed her face back into her mother’s shoulder. To her surprise, he looked confused about the incident, though naturally also frustrated and sad about the reaction of the other children.

But of course he would be, he was looking at the situation through different eyes. Angela had been a wonderful reader, quickly progressing whenever her parents asked her to read the next bit of her bedtime story. Thinking back on that, Shelagh did remember Angela looking very closely at the pages, and kicked herself for not realizing the problem sooner.

Yet at the same time, Angela’s story rewound time for her, to almost thirty years beforehand when another little girl had cried over her inability to read the chalkboard.

_She sat in the bricht licht i’ the humble East Window i’ St. Andrew’s, the queart of the kirk always a balm tae her hairt. Ma and Da had tried, but they didnae ken any better than the teacher why she warslt sair wi the reading. It wis anely in class; on Sundays she could read the hymns jis fine._

_A saft vice interrupted her thoughts._

_“I’m aye sorrowed tae hear greeting on sic a lovely afterneen.” Sister Catherine settled herself beside her._

_Shelagh wiped her tears an keeked up at her douche, bespectacled face, an it aa cam pouring oot._

_“Everyone’s lauchin at me an Mr Wilson’s getting feejee kis Ah cannea read in skail.”_

_Instead i’ the worrit look Ma and Da had gien her, Sister Catherine seemed tae un’erstn an she felt a wecht lift fae her hairt._

_The auld nun took aff her glesses an placed tham on the bridge i’ her neb. Suddenly the Sister’s face became clear tae her. She luikit aroon an fand the kirk transformed._

_Yon same afterneen, her mither teen her tae see the ee doctor. The neist day, naething cwid bring her doon, even fin the ithers caad her a wee owl. The wardle wis a newly magical placie tae her noo, an she wis fair-tricket wi it._

Mimicking Sister Catherine’s actions all those years ago, Shelagh took off her specs and gently pulled her daughter back from her so she could set them on Angela’s face. Alarmed by this development, Angela abruptly stopped crying, and Patrick’s confusion turned to comprehension.

“Darling, could you try reading what the tin on the counter says?” Shelagh knew her glasses were probably a lot stronger than the ones Angela would need, but if this was indeed her problem, they would at least be of some help.

Angela hopped in excitement as her world changed just as Shelagh’s had when she’d been of a similar age.

“All spice!” She exclaimed, “All spice all spice!”

She took off to the living room to further explore her newfound abilities, alarming her little brother out his concentration on what appeared to be a game somehow involving a doctor and a fire truck.

“Magnavox!” She shouted. “The… Lanket!”

“ _Lancet_!” Tim corrected from upstairs, where he was sequestered with his books.

Shelagh and Patrick laughed and turned back to the neglected dinner preparations.

“Would you like to take her to the optometrist tomorrow or shall I?” He asked, wrapping his arms around her.

“Hmm let me write Miss Lang a note explaining why she ought to be excused from reading tomorrow and then I’ll take her after school. Choosing your own glasses is such a big moment…” Patrick placed a kiss over the temples of her own specs, and she knew he was remembering when she’d changed her old round frames for the new horn-rimmed ones he loved so much. “Indeed it is.”

—

“These!” Angela announced confidently as she tried on what must have been the fiftieth pair of glasses that day. Shelagh and Dr. Adams exchanged a look of amused relief.

“That’s a lovely choice, darling.” The pair in question sported a warm amber cat-eye frame with three little rhinestones in each upswept corner. Predictably, they looked absolutely darling on Angela.

“You look just like your Mummy!” Dr. Adams agreed, and Shelagh felt a warm glow of pride settle in her chest.

The rest of the transaction proceeded swiftly, and Angela practically dragged her mother home so she could show off her new glasses to Daddy and Tim, both of whom were suitably admiring.

Unfortunately, the next day did not go as smoothly. Once again, Patrick came home with a teary Angela, but this time his face was like a thunderclap. She didn’t have to ask.

“The other children must have said something truly cruel, and I’ll be having a word with their parents about it.” Patrick said angrily.

Shelagh nodded in assent, but bent down to speak to her little girl. “What did they say sweetheart?”

Angela shook her head, unable or unwilling to speak.

“I’ll make you some nice cocoa, and then you, Daddy and I can talk about it. How does that sound?”

Angela agreed, looking a smidge more at ease, and Shelagh set of to prepare hot beverages for the family, making extra cocoa in a spare cozy-clad teapot to set aside for Tim and Teddy when they eventually came in from Teddy’s makeshift cricket lesson in the back yard.

A sufficient quantity of hot cocoa ingested, Angela explained what had so upset her. “Claire said my glasses were pretty, and that I looked like you, Mummy, but Doris said that I was just pretending, that I couldn’t look like you because… because you’re not my real mummy.” Her tears were flowing freely once more. “And Charlotte and Anne agreed.” She concluded, before the floodgates opened in earnest.

Shelagh and Patrick both wrapped her in their arms, silently communicating sharing a look of knowing distress overtop of her small head. They had been open with her about her adoption for as long as she could understand it, both feeling it was important that it not be a shock to her, and knowing that if they didn’t tell hear early on, she was likely to hear it from a third party. Yet neither of them were naive enough to believed they had headed off all future challenges.

“Darling, it’s absolutely not pretend.” Shelagh spoke gently but firmly. “You’re my real daughter, so I’m your real mummy, and Daddy’s your real daddy.”

Patrick kissed the neat part in her hair to emphasize the point. “You remember how you grew in another lady’s tummy, like Teddy grew in Mummy’s?” He asked. Angela sniffled in acknowledgement, remembering this conversation. “Well some people don’t understand that even though you came from another lady and man, you’re our little girl.”

“But then why did Teddy come from you and Mummy?” Angela asked quietly, still shaken.

“Because sometimes different people in a family come from different places.” Shelagh explained. “But what truly makes them all a family - what makes  _us_  a family - is that we love each other, not whether or not we look like each other.”

“And if we do happen to look like each other,” Patrick added, Angela quickly interrupting to add detail, “like how my hair and glasses are like Mummy but my eyes are the same colour as yours and Timmy’s?”  

“Exactly,” Patrick agreed. “And that’s just chance. Your looks are a gift from the man and lady who made you, and even if you had turned out to look nothing like us, you know we would love you just as much, don’t you?”

“Mmhhm.” A small smile broke through Angela’s tears as she agreed.

Shelagh felt the need to add one further clarification. “There are ways you’re like me and Daddy that aren’t chance; that are  _because_  you’re our daughter.” Angela turned her big, curious eyes to her mother.

“Like right now,” Shelagh said. “That wee expression, and the way you tilt your head, it’s just like Daddy when he’s confused.”

Patrick grinned. “And when Teddy or Timmy are naughty, or when something needs to be done, your voice and posture - that’s the way you stand - is just like Mummy.”

Angela was practically beaming now, her worries assuaged for the day as pulled her parents closer for another hug.

 


	2. Timothy

Tim washed the dishes as his parents put his little sister and brother to bed. These past couple of years he’d come to find the rhythm of washing the dishes with the radio on softly in the background rather calming. The repetitive task game him a chance to turn over the day’s troubles while occupying his hands, such that he didn’t just end up lying in bed tossing and turning.

 

The glass doors to the back yard always let through more sound than his parents remembered, so he’d overheard part of his parents’ conversation with Angela, and it lingered stubbornly in his mind. They were right that love made a family, it was something they’d raised him with that he firmly believed. But sometimes resemblance was all you had to remember someone by. He didn’t even have that. Everyone told him he was the spit of his father, expecting their comments would make him proud. Yet in spite of the ways he was proud to be like his father, he wished he was like Teddy, who took after his Mummy. He’d resisted thinking it at first. In spite of his Mum’s assurances, he still sometimes fell guilty when that old feeling of grief over his first mother welled up in him. He knew Mum would say he could love them both, and he did. But only one mother was permanently fixed in his earliest memories of what it was to be loved, and he had long ago forgotten what that love looked like on her face.

 

He was so deep in though he didn’t hear his mum coming up behind him. 

 

“You look quite melancholy, dear. Is something the matter?” She posed it as a question, but he knew she had already determined that he was feeling down.

 

“It’s not much. It’s late. You and Dad should go to sleep, I know you’ve both had a long day.” Though they’d talked about Mummy a lot when she and Dad first got engaged, and then periodically over the years, he now shied away from the conversation.

 

He should have know Mum would be determined not to send him to bed sad. She wrapped an arm around his waist, it had been many years since she was tall enough to reach his shoulders. “Tim, you know you can tell me about whatever is bothering you. And if not me, then your father. Don’t let this eat at you all night.”

 

He sighed and picked up another plate. “I overheard a bit of your conversation with Angela earlier, and it was just making me think about how much I look like Dad.” He admitted, knowing she would understand the meaning behind his words.

 

She did. “Oh Tim, you know you resemble your mother as well.”

 

He shook his head, unreasonably frustrated. “No I don’t. Everyone’s always saying I look like Dad, even you.”

 

Mum slid her arm away and picked up a drying towel, and for a moment he feared he’d hurt her. He waited for her to reply, knowing that even if he had, she would be thinking carefully about how to respond.

 

“Perhaps it was thoughtless of me, to always focus on your resemblance to your father. Others are more likely to compare the two of you because they see you together so often, and people often like to compare daughters to their mothers and sons to their fathers.” She paused to study his face, gauging something, though he wasn’t quite sure what. “It is also possible that they may worry - if they knew your Mummy - that reminding you of her would be painful.”

 

He thought on that a moment, fighting the lump in his throat as he carefully cleaned the teapot.

 

“It hurts more to forget her.” It was barely louder than a whisper, feeling childish, but a weight lifted from his shoulders as he said it. “I’ve spent as much of my life without her as with her and… I don’t remember what she looked like very well.”

 

He paused to gather himself, and was grateful that Mum let him. “I used to think I could remember what she looked like by looking in the mirror, and with photos, but now it’s like… she’s frozen. I don’t remember what it was like to see her laugh or break into a smile or look at me like you are now. And I can’t even find a rough idea of those things in the mirror, cause I look so much like Dad.”

 

“I think you may be looking at those photographs through the lenses of loss, Tim.” Mum remarked gently, taking the proffered teapot, but setting it down so she could cup his face. “I knew your mummy. Not well, but well enough that I can say you’ve got her colouring, and you certainly have her smile.”

 

Tim’s eyes blurred, but he smiled even as he sniffed and looked away, relief enveloping him like a blanket. The photo of his first birthday was the one he cherished most, for the very reason that her smile there seemed so familiar that he could convince himself he’d inherited it. To hear Mum tell him it wasn’t just him fooling himself meant a great deal to him.

 

Mum rubbed his shoulder reassuringly, but still looked concerned. “Dad would be able to tell you all the little ways you’re alike, sweetheart, why haven’t you raised this with him?”

 

“I just… didn’t know how. We moved forward after Mummy died, and I know we talked when you two got engaged - Dad and I, and you and I - but then… we moved forward.”

 

“Tim.” Mum had completely abandoned the drying now, all her attention focused on him. “We did move forward, but we never meant for you to feel you had to leave your Mummy behind. I didn’t realize how little we talked about her, and I’m sorry for it.”

 

“No, it’s okay.”He didn’t quite know how to explain that it was both a good and a sad thing. He remembered Jack coming over once about half a year after Mummy had died. He things were still everywhere, and he’d remarked that it was like a ghost lived with them. “We were all trying to figure out so many things…”

 

“We were, and always will be.” Mum reminded him, “but now we know, and you and Dad should talk.”

 

She was right, and he told her so, resuming his evening chore and assuming the conversation was over. But a sudden question rose to the front of his mind, and he surprised them both by voicing it. “Did you talk about it with your dad, how your were like your mother?”

 

Mum paused, evidently taken aback by the question. “I… no. We didn’t talk about that. We didn’t always talk about much at all to be perfectly honest.” Tim was going to ask more about that, but Mum quickly moved on. “I do know I took after him more strongly in colouring, and that in many other ways I looked like his mother, though he resembled his father more.”

 

Mum seemed lost in memory and he didn’t want to interrupt, curious about this similarity they had, her side of which he knew only in little bits and pieces.

 

“Ma had green eyes and coppery hair, very different from mine.” She seemed sad about that, just as he had been. “We were about the same height. I do remember people commenting on that, though I remember her as a tall woman.” She let out a small almost-laugh, “but then, I was just a child; even smaller than I am now.”

 

“You do have some red in your hair though,” Tim pointed out, wanting to comfort her as she had him. “A kind of brownish-red. It shows up in the light.”

 

“Then I’m glad of it.” She paused, looking past the stars that shone dimly through the kitchen window. “But I think much as I’m glad to carry even a bit of her in my appearance, it’s the memory of being safe in her arms I treasure most. It’s the only one I have of her that I want to remember.” Tim didn’t know the exact details of his Mum’s mum’s death - his grandmother’s death, really - but he knew it was grim, and Mum avoided talking about it. He wondered if he should press her on it. She always encouraged him to speak about his feelings, surely it would help her too?

 

“Mum, if you’d like… if it would help, you could remember your mummy with me. The good moments… and the sad ones.” He couldn’t look at her while saying it, afraid he’d lose his nerve.

 

Mum was quiet for so long he worried he’d truly upset her, but just as he was about to apologize, she spoke.

 

“If it would help you, then of course I will.” Her words were measured.

 

Tim shut off the tap and turned his full attention to her, mimicking her own tactics. “You already help me with my grief, all the time. What I meant was that I’d do the same for you.”

 

The blank, distantness of her guarded expression softened instantly, and he made a conscious effort to etch the transition firmly in his mind, trying to capture the movement like a video. Mum wrapped her arms around him. “I love you very much, Tim.”

 

He tried to do the same with her embrace, fixing it in his sensory memory. How many of these moments had he already taken for granted with her and Dad, in spite of his experience with loss? “I love you too, Mum”

 

She finally broke away, rubbing his shoulders gently to offset the firmness of her words. “I’d prefer not to tell you about my mother’s death. It may sound strange, but I’d prefer that, as she was never able to meet her grandchildren, you three only know the happier parts of her life. Don’t worry that I’m keeping it bottled up,” she said, anticipating his protest, “I have talked to your father about it.” She searched his face, assessing his reaction. “But if you ever feel the need to know about it, do you promise you’ll ask?”

 

“I promise. And I do understand that,” he reassured her. “When people do talk about Mummy, they talk about her illness a lot, and I don’t want that to be all people remember of her.”

 

Mum stared past him for a moment, evidently coming up with a plan. He let a small smile slip onto his face. That was _definitely_ a look he wouldn’t forget.

 

Plan concocted, Mum’s eyes refocused on his. “Would you like to start a little scrapbook about her? We can put all of the photos of her in there, and yours and Dad’s and Granny Parker’s memories of her.”

 

Tim’s vision blurred at the suggestion. “I’d like that.”

— * —

“Would you be alright with that?” Shelagh asked. She and Patrick lay abed, her relaying her conversation with Tim as he ran his fingers lazily up and down her spine.

 

“Of course.” He murmured into her hair. “That was a very clever suggestion, my Love.” He was always moved by her willingness to care for Marianne’s memory. It was a hard thing to do, he assumed, to engage with the memory of the woman who had once been in the same roles as you; who had been loved and lost by those you loved. Yet she never shied away from it. She was always there to support him and Timothy whenever that grief crept up on them. She did it out of love for them, yet he knew she did it for Marianne as well; for the woman who’d died young and lost so much. It was yet another way in which Shelagh was truly incredible. He didn’t think he would ever be able to express just how deeply he loved her big heart, though he’d often tried. Instead he just hugged her closer, knowing she would guess where his thoughts had wandered.

 

She squeezed back, communicating her understanding, but there was something else still on her mind.

 

“Patrick, do you think Angela will come to feel sad that she looks like us?” She asked quietly.

 

He was alarmed by her strange question. “Why would she?” _Where did that come from?_

 

She shifted on his chest, trying to gather her thoughts. “It’s only… Tim was sad that he couldn’t remember how he looked like his Mummy, and I’ve always been a bit sad I didn’t resemble mine more. What if Angela comes to wish she could look in the mirror and have a clearer idea of what her birth parents must have looked like, instead of seeing us reflected back at her? It is the only thing she has of them, after all.”

 

Patrick took his time answering. He was as new to this as she was, both having been raised by their own birth parents, and therefore in the dark as to Angela’s potential future feelings about her own family situation. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but somehow he felt Shelagh’s fear might be unfounded.

 

“I think you may be comparing apples to oranges my love.” He said gently. “Angela may well want to know her birth parents, or at least her birth mother -“

 

“And we did say we would be supportive if she wanted to pursue that.” Shelagh interjected. “I’m not reneging that.”

 

Patrick traced broader patterns along her arms and back, knowing it soothed her. “Nor am I, Shelagh, I just meant that her connection to them is only biological. You and Tim, on the other hand, are longing for a connection to a mother you loved and lost. You both want to hold on to them however you can, and physical resemblance is one way to do that. The most obvious way, perhaps, especially for you, given how few ways you have to remember her.”

 

He felt the tension leave his wife’s body and knew he was right, or at least as right as they could currently know.

 

She pulled his face down to hers, kissing him deeply in thanks.

 

“I’m very glad we started talking, Patrick,” she said, breaking the kiss.

 

He chuckled, remembering the conversation they’d had when they finally overcame the pain of their lack of communication before the adoption interview that now seemed so long ago, but had altered their lives so profoundly. He’d been such a different man before he’d let her into every corner of his heart. “So am I, my love. I am so incredibly glad.”

**Author's Note:**

> My sincere apologies if the Doric is terrible. I used a site that had an extensive dictionary and translation tool (http://doricphrases.com/), but it may be Google Translate quality. I wanted to get across my headcanon that Shelagh grew up speaking Doric, so her memories of her childhood could also be in Doric (as I find when I remember events that happened in French, my memory of the whole event, including descriptions is in French). If anyone speaks Doric and notes anything wrong with my translation, please tell me!
> 
> [English translation of the Doric part:
> 
> She sat in the bright light of the humble East Window of St. Andrew’s, the quiet of the church always a balm to her heart. 
> 
> Ma and Da had tried, but they didn’t know any better than the teacher why she struggled sorely with the reading. It was only in class; on Sundays she could read the hymns just fine.
> 
> A soft voice interrupted her thoughts.
> 
> “I’m always sorrowed to hear crying on such a lovely afternoon.” Sister Catherine settled herself beside her.
> 
> Shelagh wiped her tears and peeked up at her kind, bespectacled face, and it all came pouring out.“Everyone’s laughing at me and Mr Wilson’s getting angry because I can’t read in school.”
> 
> Instead of the worried look Ma and Da had given her, Sister Catherine seemed to understand, and she felt a weight lift from her heart. 
> 
> The old nun took off her glasses and placed them on the bridge of her nose. Suddenly the Sister’s face became clear to her. She looked around and found the church transformed.
> 
> That same afternoon, her mother took her to see the eye doctor. The next day, nothing could bring her down, even when the others called her a little owl. The world was a newly magical place to her now, and she was delighted with it.]


End file.
